Derek Catsam

Short Biography

Derek Catsam focuses his research and writing on race and politics in the United States and southern Africa, global terrorism, and sports. He is currently working on books on the Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, Boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa in the 1980s, and sports and society in the United States since the Civil War. His first book, Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan's Diary of the 2004 Season represented a labor of love. Catsam teaches at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He has held fellowships at Rhodes University in South Africa (from Rotary International), the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the American Political Science Association, the Institute of Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. He holds a B.A. from Williams College, an M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Ph.D. from Ohio University, where he was a student in the Contemporary History Institute.